The Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry
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The most important prize administered by the Sewanee Review is the Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry. It was made possible through the generous bequest of Dr. K. P. A. Taylor to celebrate his younger brother Conrad Aiken's accomplishments as a poet. In the fall of 2007, the twenty-first Aiken Taylor Award was presented.
by Buck Butler
The Sewanee Review is proud to announce that Anne Stevenson is the twenty-first poet honored with the Aiken Taylor Award given to a distinguished American poet for the work of a career. Since 1965 Anne Stevenson has authored over fifteen collections of verse, most recently A Report From the Border (2003), a recipient of a Poetry Book Society recommendation; Poems: 1955–2000 (2005), which collects fifty years of her poetry written during a full and much traveled life in America, England, Scotland, and Wales; and Stone Milk, released by Bloodaxe in October. Described by Jay Parini as “a contemporary Emily Dickinson, a poet who works on a small canvas, quietly, with big themes,” Ms. Stevenson’s work has been garnering critical acclaim since her time at the University of Michigan, where she studied with Donald Hall, earned her B.A. and M.A., and received three of Michigan’s Hopwood Awards for creative writing. In 2002 Ms. Stevenson was the inaugural winner of Britain’s prestigious Northern Rock Foundation Writer’s Award.
This month Ms. Stevenson was honored with the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award for 2007 in celebration of her extraordinary contribution to English-language literature. Each year the Lannan Foundation grants this illustrious award to “writers and poets whose work reflects and challenges our understanding of the world.” Ms. Stevenson also received this year’s Neglected Masters Award annually bestowed by the Poetry Foundation upon an under-recognized, significant poet. The Library of America will soon publish Anne Stevenson: Selected Poems in recognition of her prize.
In the March 2007 issue of Poetry magazine, Ms. Stevenson likens poetry to a “unified dance” through which “sound, rhythm, and image bring about a mysterious feeling of wholeness.” Her verse draws its power from its “wholeness”—from her meticulous attention to form and the musical rhythm of language. “What ‘real’ poetry can do,” she asserts, “is to reproduce the hidden music we are all born hearing but lose as we grow up.”
Ms. Stevenson’s mastery of the written word extends into the realm of prose, as she is also the author of a collection of essays; two critical studies of Elizabeth Bishop, including the first ever written; and Bitter Fame, a landmark biography of Plath. Since 1964 she has resided in Great Britain, where she has held numerous literary fellowships; Ms. Stevenson and her husband now divide their time between Durham and North Wales.
by Jemimah Kuhfeld
Following a lecture on her work by R. S. Gwynn on November 26, Anne Stevenson received the Aiken Taylor Award on November 27 on the campus of the University of the South. To hear the presentation and Ms. Stevenson's reading, click here.
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